Jess had last week off, but I don’t have much vacation, so we decided to spend a few days in Prague, and then a few in Vienna before heading back to Warsaw and finishing off the week at home.

Since my hours are pretty flexible, the plan was for me to get in as many hours as I could before and during the trip, and then make up the rest after we got back.  We figured we could take the night train to save on hotel costs, but that didn’t work out quite as planned, as I’ll explain.

The trip didn’t really go as well as we had hoped or planned, but we made the best of it.

Things started out with the train tickets.  I thought about trying to order in Polish, but the woman at the counter spoke some English, so I went with that instead.  We asked for tickets from Warsaw to Prague, Prague to Vienna, and Vienna back to Warsaw.  What we got was Warsaw to Wels via Prague, and Vienna to Warsaw.  We thought the Wels ticket was for Vienna, because the station looked like an abbreviated version of the Vienna station, so I had assumed we were all set.  That wasn’t quite the way it would work out, as you’ll see.

But the more immediate problem was when we told her we had a dog…  I didn’t think to mention that she was a pocket-sized dog, and so we were charged an additional ticket for the dog.  The total being somewhere over 4000 pln, with the dog’s tickets probably just over 1000 of that.  In hindsight, it probably would have been cheaper and easier to fly.  One nice thing, though, is that the tickets are open ended, and are good for 60 days.  So we could have travelled at any time on any train going to the destination on the ticket.  Anyways, I thought to go ask about the dog tickets, but it was late and I was just glad that we finally had everything done, so I figured it might be a surcharge for bringing a dog and wanted to err on the side of caution.  Turns out, we didn’t need the extra tickets.

To make matters worse, the train arrived in Prague roughly 2 hours after the time indicated on our ticket.  This put our last 2 hours in near panic mode, thinking we’d possibly gone too far, or gotten on the wrong train.  Eventually, though, I saw a station with a sign pointing to Prague in the direction we were heading.  From there we switched from worry to anxiety.  Especially since the dog had already been caged for 8 hours, and we didn’t know how long she could wait.

To make matters worse, we hadn’t been able to sleep much on the train, and were both exhausted.

Once we finally did get to Prague, we made the mistake of trying to walk to the hotel.   I should mention that the weather was a constant, cold, misty drizzle that constantly varied it’s intensity, but never really stopped.  Combine that with sloughing all of our bags, plus one very wet dog, through the wet, muddy streets, and you have instant misery.

We finally got to the hotel, which seemed nice enough, until we got into the room.  The room was nice enough, but the shower (separate from the toilet) smelled like poo.  Which is weird, because it was nowhere near the toilet.  Unfortunately, this was right next to the bed, and prevented us from taking showers, or using that room at all, really.  The only really good thing was that they had free Wireless Internet access, so I was able to work from the room.

But at least now we had a place to put our stuff and coordinate our sightseeing from.  We decided to start with the castle, way up on the hill.  We hadn’t eaten yet, so we stopped in a nice cafe where I had the best beer I’ve had yet.  Unfortunately, by the time we finished eating and got to the top of the castle, the ticket booths had just closed.  So we wandered around and eventually headed back down to the old town to explore.

We saw a bit, figured out where some stuff was, and took some photos.  But we were pretty tired, so we headed back, wet and muddy, to our stinky hotel room.  We both did some work, then got some sleep.

The next day was a bit more organized, but we forgot to consider that we needed to check out of the hotel in the morning, and our train wasn’t leaving until midnight (or so we thought).  So, now that we had the public transit, and destinations figured out, we had the additional burden of all of our luggage.  We packed light, so it wasn’t terrible, but the huge laptop and bag (the bag weighs at least as much as the computer!) were pulling me to one side and we both had sore backs within minutes.

But we got to see some really cool stuff, and have some great food.  We even got to meet up with one of the other families from the school, who were arriving just before we were leaving, which was really nice.  We also tried to see a show at the Black Light Theater, but we think we went to the wrong one, and saw a really trippy Alice in Wonderland show.  It wasn’t bad, and there was some nudity, which is always a plus, but it wasn’t what we were looking for. 

Unfortunately, there was still more frustration to come.  Around 3 or so, we had gotten tired of lugging our stuff and decided to go to the train station, double check departure times, and shove our crap in a locker.  Well, it’s lucky we did, because it turned out there was a train leaving for Vienna right then!  We figured we were tired of lugging our stuff, so why not.  But they told us the ticket wasn’t for Vienna!  So we checked, and it took us to the other side of the country!  Now, this is the same ticket that got us to Prague, so it wasn’t a total waste, but we thought it went on to Vienna.  So after much frustration and looking around, we decided to simply buy a ticket to Vienna.  It was very cheap, and we didn’t buy the extra "dog" ticket.

This also cut our time in Prague short, so we didn’t get to see much.  Though we did see enough to know that we’d like to come back when weather was nicer and maybe with a better place to stay.  We’d hate to remember Prague as a place we didn’t like, and are constantly reminding ourselves that it wasn’t Prague, it was the trip.

So the train ride to Vienna was nice and short, and we were able to book another night at the same hotel we had already made reservations for (we had originally planned on taking the overnight train).

When we first arrived, it was late and pretty much the only thing open was the bars and strip clubs, and it seemed the closer we go to the hotel, the more of them there were!  Plus the neighborhood was a bit scary.  We were worried, but turns out it was much nicer than it seemed, and it was mostly just because it was night and dark.

This hotel was MUCH better.  Very clean and professional, plus they gave us maps and info when we got there.  They even called to set up the tour for us (who picked us up at the hotel).  Compared to the difficulties we had in Prague, this was such a relief.  Plus we were much less shy about storing our luggage and using public transit.

Without getting into many more details (because I’m tired and I’ve already covered a lot) our trip was much better from here on out.  We had a bit of a learning curve, which was mostly spent on our Prague experience, but things panned out in the end.  We saw some really cool stuff in Vienna (my favorite was the boatride on the underground lake where part of the Three Musketeers movie that Disney made was filmed.  A movie I greatly enjoy!)

But 2 days in each city wasn’t really enough time.  Especially considering how tired and stressed we were.  So we want to go back to both in fairer weather to more fully explore both of these really awesome cities!  I was going to post pictures here, but they’re on the other computer.  For now, check my facebook page (if you know it).